Just over 206 billion kilometres in total were driven on Australian roads, up from 199 billion kilometres in the previous year, says the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

Each registered vehicle in Australia travelled an average distance of 14,800 kilometres during the 12 months ended 31 October 2005, a distance roughly equivalent to Canberra (ACT) to Perth (WA) and back twice.

Vehicles registered in Queensland travelled the furthest averaging 16,100 kilometres, followed by New South Wales with an average of 15,200 kilometres per vehicle.

New South Wales had the largest share of total kilometres travelled (31%) and the largest number of registered vehicles (4.2 million).

A third of all vehicle travel was for business and just over half (53%) of all travel was within capital cities.

Articulated trucks travelled an average of 92,100 kilometres, which was more than six times that of passenger vehicles which travelled an average of 14,100 kilometres and made up nearly eight out of every 10 vehicles on the road and three-quarters (75%) of the total distance travelled.

A total of 29.0 billion litres of fuel was used by vehicles during the period, with 17.8 billion litres of this being unleaded petrol. Passenger vehicles used a total of 15.9 billion litres of petrol, with 96% of this being unleaded petrol. There were 8.7 billion litres of diesel used. Freight vehicles used a total of 7.1 billion litres of diesel, which made up 70% of all fuel used by these vehicles.

The average fuel consumption for all vehicles was 14.0 litres per hundred kilometres.

Passenger vehicles using unleaded petrol consumed on average 11.3 litres per hundred kilometres, while articulated trucks using diesel fuel consumed on average 54.7 litres per hundred kilometres.

Further information on Survey of Motor Vehicles (cat. no. 9208.0) is available free on the ABS website <www.abs.gov.au>.